


Two Ships

by bamfsback (anomalagous)



Category: X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-11
Updated: 2013-12-11
Packaged: 2018-01-04 08:00:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1078512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anomalagous/pseuds/bamfsback
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A funky little POV drabble more or less designed to stab in the feels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Ships

Something happens to you, the first time you see her, that you'll never admit, not even to yourself. Something in the thrill of the rescue, in being the hero, in scooping her up in your arms and whisking her out of danger, something even about how she doesn't _let_ you, how her fear leads her instead to save _herself_. It sets everything you know of chivalry on its head and you find you like the flavor of it.

Her rejection, as she proves to be frightened of the face you have to face every day in the mirror, hurts more than it should. You've always brushed it off before, but this time, this time you can't, you just _can't_. You put some things out of reach, beyond the furthest star, bury it so far down in your heart you forget about it, and you settle for the arduous task of simply making her your _friend_.

Somehow it works, with enough persistence and late nights and shared troubles. You become teammates and then friends, and then even _fast friends_. You know you have broken through to her when she starts to use her own nickname for you. It even begins to grow on you, evolving out of something that seems like a painfully obvious reminder of how _different_ you are to something fond, something warm. You start to look forward to being the _fuzzy elf_.

You watch her heart start to unfold and you realize without realizing your own epiphany that you are not going to be the sun she unfurls for. Your teammate is tall, strong, and classically handsome, with a mutation he can hide away until he needs it. He saved her life _well after_ you ever did but it doesn't equate in her mind, and she's dazzled by his kind heart (not yours) and his exotic accent (not yours). He has no idea what he's doing and you bend over backwards (several times) to make their first date go well because you just want her to be _happy_.

It doesn't work as well as you hoped. He breaks her heart once, twice, and through. He leaves to consort with your enemies. Every time she comes back to you and she buries her face in your shoulder. She cries, sometimes with dignity and sometimes like a child, she lays bear before you all the burdens of her heart and you take them into your own, you tell her it will all be all right. You tell her that one day she will find a man to love her with as few reservations as she has loved with, and you don't even let yourself _think_ of yourself because it might come spilling out of your traitorous mouth one day and she is still the enigma you can't quite work through and you can't, _won't,_ live without her presence in your life.

The family falls apart but you stay together. You move to another country and start over and you try to distract yourself. It works about as well as can be expected, which is to say not at all, and after she pines away for a man who never has a second glance for her, her attention changes. She starts to date a man far too old for her and he leaves his fingerprints in her soul. You'll always be able to see them.

He changes her. She grows up too fast.

You threaten him once, in the bathroom of some pub you hadn't really wanted to go to, and that's all you do. You let her make the mistake, you let him hurt her and you let him sulk away in the night afterwards, even though it's broad daylight, and your friendship with him, such as it was, never quite recovers. She cries on your shoulder once again and you tell her the same thing you always do, and you watch as she takes it, and smiles, and folds it into the center of a heart that's closing back up, a sunflower in the face of twilight.

You move back to America. She gets back with her ex, the same ex who flew into such a violent, jealous rage over her that he almost killed her boyfriend at the time. You don't say a thing. You smile, you laugh, you tell them they have all your support in the world, and when the time comes, for the _first time_ , with your heart like the foundation of Stonehenge, heavy and immobile and placed in a position you can't quite understand the purpose for, you choose a different team. You _join the priesthood_. You try not to look under the rug.

She doesn't understand, you don't explain, not properly, not _sufficiently_. You get lost in the job and before you know it _she's_ lost to _space_.

She's gone.

She's _gone_. You let her go, you turned your back for just a moment and she's _gone_ , further out of your reach than you could possibly hope, and it's _your fault_ , you know this in the very core of your innermost being. If you had stayed on the same team, if you had been with her, it would have been different. _Everything_ would have been different. You gave your wounded heart two strides too far without even thinking, and you lost. You can't even begin to express what it _is_ you lost, you just _lost_. You feel the hole every day, growing bigger, and you try to put it under the rug too, like maybe it will consume everything that was there before and one day there will be no pain, even if that means the rest of you has surrendered to the gravity of the event horizon. You are suddenly as sure of every detail of the emotion you'd squashed for years as the Oracle of Delphi. You become self-aware for the first time and it hurts, like the birth-pangs of a half-dead star. It _hurts_ , every _day_. It hurts so much you almost forget there was a time when it _didn't_.

Yet, the Lord has mercy.

In the midst of it all, in the midst of everything, in the darkest and most desperate hour, she is brought home. You aren't there when she returns but you're told by radio and you feel like you might _explode_. She's _home_ , she's _back_ , she's _alive_ , you have a second chance. You can't let it slip through your clumsy fingers this time. You need to tell her, you _need to tell her_ , even if she turns you away, you need to know you tried, you need to breathe your heart out in clumsy English into the air around her and hope she breathes it in.

You just need to get home.

Just a little further. New York. Chicago. St. Louis. You just...you just need...

A little further, no matter how tired your body is, no matter...

You just need to ge--


End file.
